Colombian language
The Republic of Colombia is a country in South America, whose capital is Bogotá. It has a population of 50 million inhabitants (29th) and an area of 1,141,748 km 2 (25th). Its human development index is high (90º) and its official currency is the Colombian peso. And what language is spoken in Colombia?
What language do they speak in Colombia?
Colombia has an official language, Spanish. In addition, English is co -official in the Archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina.
Likewise, the constitution designates as co-official the indigenous languages in their respective territories. Education in these territories is bilingual. It is estimated that of the 85 languages spoken in Colombia, 80 are indigenous. Of these indigenous languages, it is estimated that there are about 468,000 speakers. The 10 most talked about are the following:
- Wayuu: 122,000
- Paez: 60,000
- Northern Embera: 49,700
- Guahibo: 23,000
- Guambiano: 21,000
- Inga: 18,000
- Embera Catio: 15,000
- San Andres Creole: 12,000
- Awa pit: 12,000
- Quichua Inga: 11,200
In addition to the aforementioned San Andres Creole (spoken in the archipelago) there is another Creole language: Palenquero. While the former is based on English, the latter is based on Spanish and has 500 speakers. Its inhabitants live in San Basilio de Palenque and in some neighborhoods near Cartagena.
The Spanish language
Spanish is spoken by 99.1 % of the Colombian population. It is the third country with the most Spanish speakers in the world, after Mexico and the United States, and ahead of Spain. Colombian Spanish has a wide variety of dialects, which differ in lexicon, syntax, morphology, and intonation.
Colombian Spanish has various linguistic loanwords from indigenous languages (squash, ahuyama, arepa, acuscambado, borojó, tamal…) and from African languages (cununo, marimba, macumba, zunga…)
The English language
English (English ) is spoken by 4% of the population. But the majority of these are second language speakers (96.2%); the few native speakers are American immigrants (the majority, 80%), Colombian Raizales from the archipelago (15%) and, lastly, British immigrants (5%).
Share which languages are spoken in Colombia.